Time's Enemy: A Romantic Time Travel Adventure (Saturn Society Book 1) (5 page)

“Tell me about it.” Covered in blood? He lifted his hand to his forehead and his fingers met with a short, raised area. He patted around it. As hard as he’d hit his head, it had healed remarkably well.

Dora shook her head. “That was just a little cut. Didn’t even need stitches. Of course, any head injury can be serious—the doctor says even something small like that can kill a person, but...”

“Then where—”

“That’s just it. No one knows. Other than that, you were just a little scratched and bruised up. Nothing major. Nothing that could account for so much blood.” She rose and stood next to his head, peering down him. She walked to the foot of the bed, then back. “Of course, at the time, they didn’t know that, so they brought you here on a body board.”

When the men had tied him down to the altar in his dream. “And then?”

“When they cleaned you up... nothing. No open wounds, nowhere all that blood could’ve come from. Except for this weird scar around your throat...” She reached down and brushed a finger across his Adam’s apple.

His hand flew up and clamped around her wrist
(huge stone axe)
.

She snatched her hand away. “Does it hurt?”

“No. It just... what is it?”

He slowly lifted his fingers to his neck, but the instant he felt the thick, raised ridge, images of the axe, and blood, lots of it, burst through his mind again as a ripping, burning sensation built in his chest.

His hand dropped to the bed. “Is it... what does it look like?”

Dora’s lips tightened. “It goes about halfway around your neck. Thick, like it was made with a... I don’t know, a big blade of some sort. But the strangest thing is it looks... old. Like it happened years ago. Same with the one on your chest.”

One on his— holy shit. This was way too weird.

He sat up. Man, he was so tired. Finally, he swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Help me.” He reached for Dora.

“What do you need? I’ll call the nurse—”

“No, just help me to the john.” He had dim memories of being walked to the bathroom every now and then throughout the week. “The doctors said moving around will make me get better sooner.”

She took his hand and helped him up.

He let go, then kept still for a moment. When he was sure he could stand unassisted, he shuffled to the bathroom and shut the door.

His legs wobbled. He clutched the sink, but thankfully, his feet remained planted on the cool tile. Before, it had been all he could do to take care of his needs before he collapsed, but he was getting stronger. He loosened his grip on the sink and studied his reflection in the mirror.

No trace remained of the tan he’d begun to acquire before his fall. His eyes stood out stark and bright blue against his pale skin. Dark circles rimmed his eyes beneath of his glasses.

He touched the bump above his eye, then his gaze traveled down to his throat.

A thick, silvery line ringed his neck, just like Dora had described. He ran a finger along it, but snatched his hand away as the images from his dream assaulted him once more. He forced the memories away and concentrated on the mirror.

The feeling of standing on a cliff returned, but this time the dirt was crumbling beneath his toes and he was plunging toward the distant ground. The scar was as thick as a pencil. A cut that could have been made by a big, stone axe. His so-called brother’s words flashed through Tony’s mind.
Beheaded...
Did the guy know something he didn’t?

He fumbled at the ties of his hospital gown, until all but the top came undone, then pulled the fabric aside to expose his chest.

Dread filled him when the mirror confirmed his suspicion.

A jagged L-shaped scar marred his chest to the left of his sternum. Right where the priest in his dreams had driven the dagger into him. Like the line around his throat, it was lightened with age.

The Mayan priests... the axe and knife... the blood... what if it had all somehow been real?

Tony couldn’t breathe. The second he’d pulled the black turtleneck over his head, the suffocation, the images of the stone axe, the priest looming over him, knife in hand—

Tony scrambled to get the shirt off, clawed at the armholes, clutched at the neck, then finally grabbed the hem and yanked it back over his head. Relief sluiced over him as his living room came back into view.

He fought to catch his breath. “I can’t... wear this.”

Dora stared, her chin lowered, then snatched the shirt from his hands with a sigh.

She stepped back, her brows furrowed as she studied the scar. “I think Thelma knows a good plastic surgeon—”

“No.”

Tony couldn’t do it. The thought of someone taking a knife to his throat made him want to curl into a ball and hide. He didn’t care how highly skilled a surgeon they found, no one was cutting into him.

Whatever had happened to him, some part of it was real. To obliterate the evidence would be like covering up the discovery of a vital part of himself. Pretending nothing weird had happened at the ruins. Lying.

And the scar was his only proof he wasn’t one hundred percent insane. “People will get used to it.” Eventually. It had been a week since they’d gotten home, and his stomach still lurched every time he looked in the mirror.

Dora stuffed the shirt back into the bag and snapped her briefcase shut as the doorbell rang. “You’re still too weak to return to work.” He wanted to argue with her but she was right. He’d gotten up only an hour ago and all he’d done was watch sports news. Same thing he did every weekend or day off, but already he felt like taking a nap. Dora bent over him to brush her lips across his in a cursory kiss, then hustled out the back door as his sister Lisa sailed in the front.

Tony frowned after his wife. Dora had enough sick leave to stay with him instead of calling his sister, but of course she wanted to get back to work. He could almost understand, might have been tempted to do the same had the situation been reversed. Work was what they both did best.

Lisa leaned on the back of the recliner opposite him. “How’d your latest tests come out?”

“Everything’s within normal range.”

“I think you should get a second opinion.”

“I’ve already gotten a second opinion. And a third, and a fourth.” He’d been to the hospital a dozen times since he’d come home. They’d poked him, prodded him, hooked him up to monitors and run him through machines, some more than once. They still didn’t have a clue what happened. Nothing to explain his extreme fatigue, or the temporary slowing of his metabolism, pulse and all.

“Maybe you should try the Cleveland Clinic.”

“No.” He’d been through enough. All he wanted was to go back to work and for things to get back to normal.

“But Tony—”

“I’m fine now, so what’s the point?”

His sister’s bespectacled blue gaze, so like his own, met his. “The point is that people don’t hibernate. Metabolisms don’t just drop for a week, then return to normal for no reason—”

“Look, if you just came over here to argue with me, then leave. I’m fine, okay?”

“Yeah, like you were fine after Bethany...” Lisa walked around Dora’s recliner and sat.

“My blood pressure’s fine.” After he’d complained of daily headaches at their weekly dinner at their parents’ a couple years ago, their mom had coerced Tony into seeing a doctor, who’d discovered his high blood pressure. By paying a little more attention to what he ate and making use of the company’s exercise room, he’d quickly gotten it under control. “I haven’t even had any headaches.”

“Well, I guess that’s good.” Lisa grabbed the stack of newspapers from the coffee table and tidied them, putting the
Dayton Daily News
on the bottom, then the
Wall Street Journal
.

“I’m going back to work Monday,” Tony said.

She stopped shuffling papers and frowned. “I don’t think—”

“I’m fine,” he insisted. “I sit at a desk all day. If I get worn out, I’ll leave early. I’ll feel better once I get back to work.”

Lisa moved to Dora’s magazine rack next to the recliner and pulled the magazines out. “Tony, you’ll feel better when you get on with your life, not just get back to work. I mean, do your job, sure, but—”

“What do you mean, get on with my life?”

She tilted her head, leaned forward slightly. “You know, ever since Bethany.”

At least Lisa said her name. His mother never did, like it was a forbidden word. Like he couldn’t handle it. “I was getting on with my life just fine until this—”

“No you’re not.” Lisa’s face grew stern. “You’re going through the motions. Have been for three years, now.”

He dragged himself off the couch and walked to the window. Behind him, Lisa shuffled through the magazines. “Hey, it’s the dog lady,” Tony said.

“Huh?” Lisa had begun to sort the magazines into three piles: one for
Redbook
, one for
Newsweek
, one for
Cosmopolitan
. He used to do the same thing himself until Dora said it drove her nuts and made him stop.

“She used to walk her dog up our street every now and then. No one around here has any idea who she is, she never talks to anyone. Just smiles. Probably been a good couple years since I’ve seen her.” The tall, leggy blonde walked past the house, taking tiny steps as if to match those of the little white terrier at the end of a delicate-looking leash. “Last time, she had a dachshund.” Like they’d had when they were kids. “Remember Sammy?” He forced a laugh. “You always hated it when Mom called him a wiener dog.”

Lisa slid a
Cosmo
onto the stack of
Redbooks
. “Tony, what I said. Think about it.”

“Put the
Newsweeks
on this side, and
Redbook
closest to her chair.
Cosmo
goes in the middle,” Tony said. That was how he’d always done it.

“Tony Solomon, you will not change the subject on me.” But she did as he asked.

“Then stop trying to judge me.” Tony’s face went slack. “You haven’t followed a hearse up the hill to the cemetery with your kid inside...” He looked away and focused on the dog lady before the memory overwhelmed him. “I’m definitely going back to work Monday—”

The front storm door slammed. Tony and Lisa looked at each other, then Lisa jumped up and ran to the foyer. “Who is it?” Tony called as the door opened and shut.

Lisa returned, clutching a folded newspaper, which she thrust at Tony.

Tony groaned as soon as he glimpsed the masthead.
The National Weekly Star
, one of the last of the grocery store tabloids. As he took the paper, a card fluttered to the floor. “Who left it?

Lisa shrugged. “All I saw was a little blue car driving away.”

Tony made a face at a grainy image of himself superimposed upon a jungle scene of scantily clad natives dancing around him,
El Castillo
in the background.
But they weren’t dressed like that; they wore colorful robes and animal skins...

In the dream
, he corrected himself, resisting an urge to scratch his neck.

Disappearing Man Actually a Time Traveler
, the headline read. “You’ve got to be kidding,” Tony said.

“One of the more creative ones I’ve seen.” Lisa grabbed one of Dora’s
Cosmos
and flipped through it while Tony skimmed the article.

It began with a summary of his fall on the pyramid and subsequent disappearance. “One minute he was there, and the next he wasn’t. It was like he disappeared into thin air,” a woman (unnamed, of course) from a tour group stated. A description of the ensuing half-hour manhunt followed, then the weird stuff began.

“Tony Solomon didn’t just disappear, he traveled back in time,” the article quoted an also-unnamed anthropologist. When Tony read the next paragraph his skin grew clammy.

While not widely publicized, sources say a stone dagger, a never-before-seen artifact, was found lying beside the unconscious Tony Solomon. Its style and the decorative carvings on its handle link it to the Chichén Itzá population of approximately 900 A.D. It has been theorized that Solomon was captured by the prehistoric Mayans and sacrificed as an enemy. It’s no wonder, as he had been wearing clothing typical of a modern American tourist.

“The priests and assistants would have stripped off his clothing, secured him to the altar, and cut out his heart as an offering to their gods,” stated the researcher in his exclusive interview with the
Star
. “In addition, such sacrifices were often beheaded. The fact that Mr. Solomon was found totally nude and drenched in his own blood bears out this hypothesis.”

With shaking hands Tony lowered the paper to his lap.

Lisa glanced up. “You all right?”

“Yeah... just tired.” He pushed the paper off his lap. Time travel. Sacrifice.
No way
. The tabloid slid off the couch with a muffled crinkle. Lisa snatched it from the floor and added it to the stack of other newspapers on the coffee table, then bent to retrieve the scrap of paper she’d dropped when Tony took the tabloid. “This fell out of—”

Tony snatched the slip of paper. The plain, white business card bore a stylized image of a pocket watch with a Saturn ring, flanked by three stars. Beneath it, elegant, engraved-look type read
The Saturn Society, Charles F. Everly, Watchkeeper.
The card listed a Harrison Street address in Dayton, along with a phone number and web address.